Walking Free and Meat Me

I remember my host mom in Kazan’ telling me that in the Golden Ring, most of the tours are of churches. The Golden Ring is a group of old cities located not far from Moscow that are situated in a sort of ring, thus the name the Golden Ring. Yaroslavl’ is one of the cities located in the Golden Ring, so during my time in the city I had the opportunity to see many churches.

Christina and I had a slow start to our day. We finally had time to relax and take a break from CIEE’s activities, so we took advantage of it and decided to take our time doing what we wanted to do. After I showered, I was able to have a nice conversation with the woman who was working at the front desk of the hostel when we arrived the night before. I like conversations like these because it helps me practice my Russian, but I also get to learn a little bit about someone who I wouldn’t otherwise know anything about. It turns out this woman was a professor, and now she has a son around the age of 35 who already has five diplomas in different areas of study and works in Moscow.

After Christina and I had finished getting ready we realized we didn’t have breakfast food, so we made a sort of makeshift breakfast with some apples that Christina had and peanuts that I had, and decided we should buy some food before we returned to the hostel later that day.

Christina had looked up directions on how to take the public transportation to the city center, but even with directions, navigating a new city can be confusing. We turned right from the hostel and walked until we found a bus stop. We knew the number of bus we were supposed to take; we just had to make sure we got on one going the right direction. Unfortunately it was difficult to tell what the right direction was because we didn’t know the city. I remembered the taxi trip the night before, when the driver told us that we were driving through the city center to get to the hostel and I thought we had come from the other direction to get to the hostel but I wasn’t the one who had taken the initiative to look up the directions so I decided to go with what Christina said.

We got on a trolleybus and passed quite a few stops before we decided the scenery was looking wilder and less populated. We decided eventually to get off and get on a bus going the other direction, and thankfully before we did this we were able to find a café with wifi to look up what busses would bring us to the city center. It turned out that only Marshrutka’s could take us from where we had ended up to where we wanted to go. (Marshrutkas are sort of minivans that you pay a flat rate to go on whatever route they drive. It is like any regular transportation except I believe they are privately run and they don’t have to stop at every stop. They only stop when passengers ask them to, or if someone from the road flags them down).

We decided that it hadn’t been a waste of time to go in the wrong direction because it was enjoyable to see a less populated area of the city. We didn’t have a set schedule anyway, so spending some of our time somewhere else did not interfere with any plans we had. Yaroslavl’ is a small city so we decided the first day that we would just walk around and go to any place that struck our interest.

(The first church we visited)

The first place we ended up was a beautiful brick Orthodox Church. The outside was magnificent, but the inside was nothing special. The icons looked like a different quality than the ones I had seen in Moscow, Kazan’ and St. Petersburg, but Yaroslavl’ is a less known city so that could be a reason why their icons and ornaments were not as impressive. Although my friend Christina did mention to me later that she had seen an icon with a dog’s head, which we had not seen in an Orthodox Church before, and looking it up later, she concluded that it was probably St. Christopher, but could have been St. Andrew or St. Bartholomew. The lure behind it is that when the city was a city of cannibals, the people had dog’s heads, but after they were baptized, the baptism cured them of this. Apparently it is very rare to find icons with dog’s heads so this was a lucky find on Christina’s part. I am sorry I didn’t see it myself. The other interesting piece that Christina saw in the church was a stone with a carving of a crucifix on it. Christina has not looked this up yet, but it is interesting because it is not something we commonly see in Orthodox Churches.

(Another church)

After we left the church, we wandered through the city a little more until we came upon a foot street like they seem to have in every Russian city. We walked down it hoping to find something interesting, but the only part we found interesting was an antique shop which was located a little beyond the foot street. The shop had very beautiful and ornate pieces, but of course they all had painfully high prices accompanying them, so we continued on down the street only to find another cathedral.

(The church we found down the street)

This cathedral was located on one side of a square. It seemed to be closed so we only took pictures of the outside, but it was interesting because the church was only two or three colors except the arch over what seemed to be the main entrance. The arch was very colorful and didn’t seem to fit with the design of the church at all, but I find with Orthodox churches that their designs don’t usually make sense.

(The colorful archway)

On the other three sides of this square were three other large buildings. One that was gray and obviously Soviet style with the hammer and sickle represented on its corners, while the others were imperial style with brighter colors and baroque-style white trim. The combination of multiple periods and styles of architecture in one square was really beautiful, and it was pleasant to look at even though the change from the bright white and yellow building to the solid gray building was sort of shocking at first glance.

(The yellow and white building)

(The Soviet building)

After we visited this square we had been out for a few hours walking around, so we decided to take a break. We went to an anti-café, which is a café where you pay by the hour instead of paying for each cup of coffee or tea separately. Even after spending a couple of hours there, the bill was very small, and the experience had been enjoyable. I remember when I was in Kazan’, one of my peer tutors had wanted to take me to an anti-café, but we had not gone because at the time I was out of money. I am glad that in Yaroslavl’ I finally had the chance to experience what it was like.

From the anti-café we continued to wander the streets of Yaroslavl’ and take in the fresh air and new sights. We made our way into a second-hand store where we found full-length fur coats for a little over 3000 rubles. Fur coats are very popular in Russia, but they are also very expensive, even at second hand shops. At first when we read the price tag, I thought I had misread it and that the price was 32,000 rubles, which would have been closer to the normal price of a fur coat, but the coats were in fact just very inexpensive.

(Some random buildings, pay attention to the color scheme here. I don’t think they quite understand the concept of paint)

When the light started disappearing from the sky, we decided it was time to look for an actual meal. Christina had found a restaurant online that appealed to her interest, so the search for that began. The restaurant was called “Meat Me,” and although I am not generally a big meat eater I hadn’t done the work of looking up a restaurant so I was willing to give this one a try.

(And more oddly colored buildings)

(Cool brick apartment buildings)

The interior of the restaurant reminded me of a hipster-lumberjack, if that was a thing. The waiters and waitresses were dressed in red and black plaid shirts, and the tables and other woodwork seemed to be made of freshly cut wood. On the wall behind where I sat, was a large map of a seemingly random chunk of Europe with stickers from the various countries placed inside. On my right-hand side was an old motorcycle propped in the window, which seemed a little random to me and yet, it seemed to fit somehow with the rest of the décor. The taste of the food went with the interior design of the restaurant too, so all in all it was a good meal.

(The bike – looks sort of like a Vespa – in Meat Me)

On the way to the restaurant we had passed many product stores that kept reminding me that we needed to go shopping so that we would have something to eat the next morning. We thought it would be easy to find a store again once we left the restaurant since there had been so many, unfortunately we were mistaken. We probably walked for another half an hour before we found a store that had what we were looking for, which than allowed us to finally head back in the direction of the hostel.

(Food from Meat Me)

Our day ended with us practicing our Russian by talking to whoever chose to speak to us, and watching movies in Russian that we had already seen in English, so we could better understand what was going on.